[1] On the hill in the centre of the suburb are located a school for the deaf and a children's home.
Emerald Hill is thought to have been named so either due to its verdant hill due to the large number of trees or its many Irish connections – many of the roads in the suburb have Irish origins, such as Dublin, Belfast, Wicklow and Cork.
[4] The area is also notable for its Catholic institutions such as St. John's High School and the Dominican Convent.
Like parts of the North West, Emerald Hill is relatively well off, leafy and quiet but have become slightly rough around the edges since the mid-2000s.
The country's economic crisis in that decade led to thousands of local university-educated residents and professionals emigrating to the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, thus the area lacks much of the wealth and vibrancy it had in the nineties and early 2000s.